Monday, August 24, 2009

Getting kids to pick up the little things

We have a lot of little things which litter our park. I don't think anyone has ever bothered to pick them up ... just let the rain wash and the wind blow. Yet, I'm a little more proactive than that.

Daddy-O and I made an announcement: we'd be paying 1 cent for every cigarette butt. Each child has a paper with their name on it, where said butts can be placed for credit.

In just two days, we're out $4.37. Not too bad when you consider it equates to 437 fewer butts on the ground.

It also doesn't help how my kids reacted with sadness when I happily announced one of our monthlies has been trying to quit smoking.

OH, and then there was the trip into town today when our youngest grabbed a cigarette butt out of the parking lot, having every intention of bringing it back home for credit. No m'am! The Office Depot has to pay for their own cleaning crew.

I do insist they wash their hands 48 times after doing this. I'm sure they don't. With the rate most of them put their hands in their mouths, they'll all have a nicotine addiction within the month. Don't act shocked when you come for a visit and all my kids are on the patch.

When I was about 12, our family vacationed at the ocean. There was a minigolf course with a sign up that said that if you picked up 500 butts and turned them in, then you would get an all-day pass. I led my younger brother and sister in the efforts of collecting enough butts for us all to get those all-day passes. And we did it. And then it got so hot out that we only played minigolf for a little while. We are all now in our 40s but we all three remember that day vividly. Such fun, and such a feeling of accomplishment. Your kids will remember this offer you've made them!

Wow fabulous idea!! However i would hate to see what a strong breeze or a jumping cat would do to those neat piles of nasty butts! Maybe ziploc bags would be better? Are your customers taking the hint and using receptacles?

crap i write about

years of drivel

"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.
Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I,of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories, in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."